There are many programs out there for remote execution. You can use a unix-like rsh, or a COM-based thing, or a few others. Find one you like, and use that from Perl. There's one or two in the Resource Kit. I think it was on sysinternals.com where I saw one that didn't need software installed on the remote system first. You could even write your own in a few lines of Perl using a socket or named pipe interface.